Heat exchangers are well known in the art. However, many fluids cooled or heated in a normal tube exchanger cause fouling of the heat exchanger surfaces contacted by the flowing material. More specifically, when cooling liquids or gases containing hydrocarbon, the inside of a the cooling tube may foul with paraffin or other solid condensed during cooling, and when heating such gaseous or liquid materials, or solids containing such materials, the inside of the heat exchanger tubes may foul with a coke or other solid. When a normal pipe or tube exchanger fouls, the efficiency drops to a point where very little heat is exchanged to or from the flowing medium so the exchanger must be shut down and cleaned. This is a very expensive and time consuming situation, especially since, in many instances, a heat exchanger can foul in only a few hours or even minutes.
There is a significant need for heat exchangers which can be used to process such liquid, gaseous or solid materials. For example, in many petrochemical processes, by-products and waste materials are produced which must be disposed of in such a way as to avoid contamination of the environment. In some cases noxious, sometimes poisonous, gases are emitted from waste materials, so that it is necessary to prevent them from escaping. Waste materials also sometimes contain valuable materials which it is desirable to recover. Processes now being used to process such materials often have prohibitively high cost, so that there is a great need for a lower cost method of treating such materials for disposal. When solids are included among the materials to be disposed of, it is usually necessary to dry them to remove water, other liquids and noxious gases. Filter presses are now used for this purpose, but these are incapable of completely dewatering many solids, so vaporization must still be used.
In my copending application, Ser. No. 07/384,366, I have disclosed apparatus which can be used as a heat exchanger for treatment of such materials in many cases. However, a further need exists for applications which involve the application of high temperatures and require a seal to prevent the escape of noxious gases.